EC directive 'bans blood donations after US trips'

Blood donors are being banned from giving blood for a month after returning
from the US because of a European directive.

Donors who reveal they have just returned from the States are being told to defer their appointments because of the - very small - risk that they might be harbouring the West Nile Fever virus.

In 2004 and 2005, the National Blood Service started screening donors who had been to North America for the virus, which is borne by mosquitoes and can be passed on via infected blood donations. They found no infected donors.

That followed a 2003 epidemic across North America, where it had previously been almost unheard of.

In 2004 an European directive (2004/33/EC) was then introduced stipulating a mandatory 28 day no-donation rule for people who had returned from areas with "ongoing transmission" of the virus to humans, such as the US and Canada. It came into effect the following year.

Last year there were 1,021 reported cases of West Nile Fever in the US, according to its Center for Disease Control (CDC), resulting in 57 deaths.

Many American states reported few cases, including Washington DC (District of Columbia) , Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The virus can cause inflammation of the brain, called encephalitis, as well as meningitis and acute inflammation of the spinal cord.

Since 2004 there have only been two cases reported in Britain, both of which originated in Canada.

The website of the National Blood Service admits that "many of the rules implemented in the UK on who can give blood are a requirement of European law".

Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, said last night that the directive sounded like the typical product of the EC bureaucracy.

He said: "They very often supply solutions to non-existent problems, because the job of the bureaucracy is to justify it's existence".

He added: "I've observed over many years how they will always tend to err on the side of maximum regulation in order to justify their budgets, rather than saying 'To what problem is this a solution?' "

A spokesman for NHS Blood and Transplant, which runs the National Blood Service, said officials had "no discretion" to deviate from the directive.

She said: "Because we are a government body, we follow the EC guidelines. There's no discretion."

She added: "We are working up plans to implement a [screening] test because the West Nile virus is becoming endemic in Europe."